“ — the truth of the Lord endureth forever.”

(Psalm 117:2)

The ancient Jewish rabbis used to teach that every day the Lord God was angry. Every day He wept. For three hours He studied the Torah. After that He would sit on the chair of judgment, then, moving over in the nick of time to the mercy seat to hear and heed the prayers of those who cried unto Him, lest the very earth be destroyed. Then for three hours He would provide food for every living thing, keeping the last three hours clear so that He could play with Leviathan! This, the rabbi taught, was the Lord God’s daily schedule! (Paul Scherer — Event in Eternity)

This is, of course, a very crude anthropomorphism — a making of God in man’s image. It cuts down and crams together into a small human image the great, vast teachings of scripture about the nature of God. Yet it is a very cogent way of expressing the Judaeo-Christian faith that God remains true to Himself — the whole of His vast, complex nature — every day — eternally.

In our Presbyterian Westminster Catechism definition of God it is this aspect of the divine nature which is referred to in the word — “truth”. You will remember that catechism definition of God: “God is a spirit infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” This is what the Psalmist had in mind when he said: “The truth of the Lord endureth forever.”

We do not exhaust the meaning of the term: “the truth of God” by affirming that God tells the truth — the absolute truth — that His word in the scripture is truth; though this is a part of the meaning of “the truth of the Lord endureth forever,” this is not all.

The Dutch theologian and sociologist, Cornelius Van Peursen, points out in his exhaustive study of the Hebrew word, “Emeth,” usually translated “truth” in our English Bibles: “this word designates something that can be counted on, something that is found to be dependable. It is used to refer to a vine which bears fruit, as expected, in the harvest season. God is spoken of as true because He does what He says He will do. He delivers the slaves from captivity and is thus true to His people. Performance is the yardstick of Biblical truth … Jesus speaks and says: ‘I am the truth’, and He tells His followers that they should do the truth.” (Harvey Cox — The Secular City)

This pragmatic concept of the truth of God is found in Isaiah’s little parable of the rain coming down from heaven, watering the earth, and causing it to bring forth fruit. The rain is the symbol of the word of the Lord coming down to earth and bringing forth fruit in human life worthy of and compatible with the divine nature. “The word of the Lord,” says Isaiah, “will not return to Him void, (or unproductive).” Nothing can frustrate God in His purpose.

The parking lot at the Memphis Airport is becoming a repository for old wrecks of automobiles. The same thing is happening to the parking lots at the airports of other cities. Someone will drive an old jalopy to an airport, take off in a plane, and leave the old wreck there for weeks, or even years, running up parking charges the owner never intends to pay. Presumably the wrecks are left by people who are seeking anonymity. Fed up with what they have done, with what they have become, or with the people with whom they have been associating, they are leaving their old life behind — name, identity, associations, for something new.

What better illustration can we find of what God is not. With God there is no departing from His former self, His record, His name, His associations, His course of action. God remains steadfast, faithful, true. “The truth of the Lord endureth forever.”

Martin Niemoeller was a German pastor who was imprisoned for his open opposition to Adolph Hitler and all Hitler’s Nazi policies of persecution of the Jews, his doctrine of Aryan racial superiority, and his rewriting of Jewish and Christian theology. When the war was over and Niemoeller was released from prison, he came to lecture in America. I heard him at a Minister’s Conference in New York tell of his quandary over what he should say and what text of scripture he should choose for his first sermon to the faithful German Christians, who like himself had suffered through all the war years and now faced a bleak future in their devastated land. He told us ministers in that conference that he had chosen those words of Isaiah proclaiming the steadfast, unflagging integrity of their God, regardless of the ebb and flow of human sin, cruelty, and shame. His text was Isaiah 54:10: “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” Our God will remain true eternally in His nature, character, word and works.

But this Biblical faith in the integrity of God is not believed in by all people, even some who think of themselves as religious persons. A number of years ago there arose a strange school of theology called the “death of God.” These theologians are gone, thank God, but their influence lingers. They began with Kierkegaard’s thoroughly correct idea that organized Christianity had obscured the real message of the Gospel and the true Biblical image of God behind their false image of Him. The result was the creation of an idolatry composed more of cultural forms and values than the scriptural presentation of the truth of God. So, when society moved on in the historical process past those cultural values and discredited them, they argued it was apparent that the God men had believed in was dead.

But where the “God is Dead” theologians began to go astray was in their obsession with the idea that Christianity had proclaimed a God whose hand was so heavy in human history that He emasculated human initiative. They insisted that such a God must be annihilated in order to make human beings act responsibly here in our earthly society. “The god who emasculates man’s creativity and hamstrings man’s responsibility for his fellows must be dethroned.” (Harvey Cox — The Secular City)

But today we ask ourselves: “Have human beings in our time grown more responsible in our world when they have relied less on God and more on themselves — when they have insisted on “doing it my way?” One contemporary theologian observes that, as men and women come of age in the sense of being liberated from too heavy a dependence upon God, they are not asking the traditional religious questions, like: “What is salvation?” What is regeneration? What is atonement?” But are still asking the age-old questions of value and purpose and right and wrong and guilt and forgiveness. Questions like these: “Where can I find satisfactory security? On whom can I depend when I need a friend? What about this inner emptiness I feel, and guilt? Where can I get relief? Where and how can I find peace of mind? What about death?” These are religious questions.

And the crumbling of old cultural patterns, and the discrediting of ancient inadequate representations of religious realities, and the declaration of minority, ethnic, and sexual freedoms, have not done away with humanity’s continuing spiritual needs. And unless somehow we can find satisfying answers to such questions we cannot survive.

Have we become so completely accommodated to life on this planet and so far removed ourselves from the notion of a transcendent God that we have not the slightest affiliation of understanding with Thomas Wolfe as he wrote: “Something has spoken to me in the night, burning the tapers of the waning year; something has spoken to me in the night; and told me that I shall die. I know not where. Losing the earth we know, for greater knowledge; losing the life we have, for greater life; leaving the friends we loved, for greater loving; men find a land more kind than home, more large than earth. Whereupon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the spirits of the nations draw, toward which the conscience of the world is tending — a wind is rising and the rivers flow.”

Of course, the principal reason for the emergence of a cynical theology like the horrific cult of “the death of God” among people in and out of the church is that people have found so much sham and empty words and pretense and utterly false notions in the religion of the church as they have experienced it.

“In one of Mark Rutherford’s novels, a character strikes out angrily at a church-goer saying: ‘Why, he is a contemptible cur; and yet it’s not his fault. He has heard sermons about all sorts of supernatural subjects for thirty years, and he has never once been warned against meanness.’” (J. S. Bonnell — radio sermon)

And what will make God come alive and be trusted in, in times like ours? Well, first: a strict, authentic restoration of speaking only the word of scriptural truth about God in His church, that will be a beginning. A clamor arose in our Presbyterian denomination a few years ago to replace our old Confession of Faith, which was once a powerful and true deliverance about God in relation to 17th century Anglo-Saxon society, but which had been somewhat discredited by time, and come out with an honest, authentic, Biblical word about God for modern people. The result was the production of our Declaration of Faith.

            Presbyterian Outlook – 2/19/96

But the struggle has not ended. This week’s Presbyterian Outlook carries the news of the appointment of Wallace Alston, a respected Presbyterian Pastor and Theologian, as Director of Princeton’s Center of Theological Inquiry.

His task, Alston says, will be to help the church face the crisis of the hour — a crisis of faith. Alston believes the church “must recover its ancient faith and its ability to confess its faith in winsome ways for a new time … for in this secular world in which we live … people are attempting to live their lives as if there were no God.”

Second, the act of truth by God’s people for all to see will make God come alive for the unconvinced and unconverted. Do you remember St. Mark’s description of what won a pagan Roman centurion to a confession of his faith? This soldier stood by the cross of Jesus. He saw Jesus’ concern for his mother. He heard His words of forgiveness for His enemies and tormentors. He observed the crucified one’s unwavering faith in the Eternal God, even in the moment of death, saying, “Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.” And in breathless reverence the Roman Centurion confessed his faith: “Truly this man was the son of God.” (Mark. 15:39)

And third, and most important of all, the spirit of truth in any person’s honest approach to God whenever or wherever expressed, will make God come alive. The famous Isaiah formula of the immanence and transcendence of God — His remoteness and His nearness — also expressed the great mystery and unspeakable wonder of how the Most High God will companion with and reveal Himself to all human beings: Listen to God’s prophet, Isaiah:

“For thus says the High and Holy One, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy; I will dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite one.” (Isaiah 57:15)

Only the true, the honest, the unpretentious posture of a person, as that one really is — a sinful, unworthy suppliant, with a contrite and humble heart — only such a one can know the reality of God. That humble and earnest spirit is the “open Sesame” for the human spirit into the presence of the Almighty. Here the picture is not of a golden door that swings open to heaven, but rather of a human heart that opens in humble contrition, and instantly the whole of that one’s life is flooded with the glory and power of God.

A wife was telling how she felt when first she heard the grave diagnosis of her ill husband’s trouble and knew that he must undergo serious surgery. “I was afraid,” she said, “that I couldn’t hold up emotionally. I was afraid that I would break down and make everything more difficult for him. So I prayed about it. And suddenly I felt inside the calmest and strongest peace I’ve ever known. Isn’t God good?”

“The truth of the Lord endureth forever.” He remains faithful through our unfaithfulness. The result of our disloyalty to Him is to obscure for ourselves and others His Eternal Integrity. But by our genuine, unphoney response to Him each moment, we can have a part in making God come alive for others.

 

PASTORAL PRAYER

Eternal God, into the calm of Thy presence we bring our restless lives. Quiet, we pray, the turmoil of our stormy spirits. We need to be hushed that we may hear the Highest speak.

Speak, Lord, to our consciences. May an arresting word from Thee stop us if we are traveling a wrong road. The enticements and encouragements from a mad world are so loud and clear. Show us the flimsiness of our excuses and evasions, and grant us here an hour of honest dealing with ourselves and Thee. From our ill tempers, our unkind moods, our hasty words, our cherished vindictiveness, Good Lord, deliver us. In the quiet of this hour may we be born again into a better mind and a more worthy life.

Speak to us through the painful wounds we have suffered, O Lord. Some of us have come through great disappointment and pain, and tribulation of sorrow. Speak to us, O Lord, in the midst of our hurting that we be spared the double tragedy of fruitless suffering. Purify and remake us through the fires of adversity that we may be able to say with Thy Apostle: ‘God intermingles all things with good for those who love Him.’

Speak to us in memory, O Lord, we pray. May the recollections of homes from which we have come, of friends whose affection and fidelity have sustained us, of sacred hours when we have been certain of Thy guiding hand, cleanse and reassure our hearts. Above all, may the light of the knowledge of Thy glory, which we have seen in the face of Jesus Christ, our Lord, stir us all to gratitude and devotion. Thanks be to Thee for Him, for His coming to redeem us, for His life and teaching, for His tragedy and triumph. He is the way, the truth, and the life — O God, make that not only our belief, but our conviction and our experience, as we offer our prayers in His name. Amen